Trying local restaurants always figures large in my trip planning. I do not plan every meal but I will research it (local cuisine/specialties/places and/or food not to be missed) and definitely plan for a few specific restaurants and then try whatever I come across while walking around.
It seems an important part of travel to me. The places need not be expensive or Michelin Starred places. Usually I look for the cafes or small restaurants that are busy. If the locals like it then they are probably good and reasonably priced.
I will say though, I have found locals to be a little unhappy that a foreigner is in “their” place. I’ve never had a problem but I have had some distinct feelings of disapproval from the locals. They like it because it is local and not a place foreigners frequent. I still like those places though and do my best to be polite and unobtrusive.
I 100% agree but I will say I have found foreign pizza to terrible compared to the US (Italy does them well). It’s so strange. It seems such a simple thing. Then you are in Sweden and order a pizza and wonder what they hell they are doing.
Not a big deal for me. I do not go to Sweden for pizza. But when traveling I occasionally want something familiar. Order a pizza and…it’s not familiar.
For me, I am there to experience the culture and eating is central to so many cultures. It’s a great way to meet the locals and chit-chat and have a drink and learn about their society. Eating is central to socializing with people. Has been throughout human history.
The museums are great and I love them too. But those are secondary to me.
The closest I came to what the OP describes was when I was ‘thru-hiking’ the Appalachian Trail. For that I had to plan my meals for the next x days till the next resupply. I didn’t go by calories but by weight. I would pick out the number of breakfasts, 2nd breakfasts, lunch, snacks, dinners and midnight snacks I would need and also in order of how long I could expect them to stay good (not spoil). As a final check I would take my entire food items to the produce scale and weight the lot of it, and compare it to the general rule of thumb 1.5- 2 lbs per day. If it fell within that weight range I went to checkout, if not I had to change things till it was. Too little would mean risking running out of food, too heavy and it was just miserable to carry extra food for no reason.
In town it was eat big, drink big, like an entire large pizza in a sitting washed that down with a 6-pack over that afternoon, evening, or sometimes even morning (time of day protocols go out the window on trail). Leaving town and for that day/night I would bring whatever I wanted. Things typically would not spoil in that time frame and I would often bring things like fast food meals. After that diet became more restrictive as to what I can carry and what won’t spoil.
Coming back from that adventure it took about a month to relearn how to shop at a supermarket. Things like taking a weight estimation on every item picked up, and buying more then just for a few days.
When we moved to Luxembourg, early on we had an itch for Chinese food and tried a local place. We were very disappointed, but we couldn’t put our finger on it.
A few weeks later, we tried another, and it was disappointing in the same vague way— except this time a light bulb went on for me.
Back in the States, when we went out for Chinese, we weren’t really having proper Chinese like you’d get on the mainland (unless we made a specific effort to find an obscure hole in the wall somewhere) — we were having Americanized Chinese. It was a version of the cuisine that was compromised to be accessible for American tastes and preferences; that’s what we were used to.
And then here, what we were served, what the restaurant was offering, was French Chinese, which is quite different — textures, balance of flavors, presentation… it’s aimed at the French diner, the French palate. We don’t care for it because it’s not familiar to us, but a French patron likes it just fine.
So, yeah. Just because the Swedish pizza isn’t to one’s taste doesn’t mean it’s bad, per se. Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s just different.
My wife and I have food planning as an extremely low priority when we travel. We’d rather sight-see or go to museums rather than visiting a particular restaurant, so we tend to just grab a quick bite wherever (often at the hotel for breakfast or supper).
If we wanted to go to visit fancy restaurants, we could do that in the city where we live (but we rarely do so).
Yeah, there are bad examples of stuff, I’m sure, but if pizza is a thing somewhere, and it’s popular there, then chances are they actually like it that way, despite how weird and awful it might seem if you’re coming from somewhere else.
Other than strenuous multi-day hiking, where I do work out calories, I can’t imagine doing this.
In domestic travel, I choose what is easiest. In foreign travel, what is most exotic. I mean, how many chances of eating lamb-brain curry do you get? Only one, so far, for me - so of course I tried it. Pretty good, if you ever find yourself in Delhi with some time to spare.
FWIW, I love Portuguese style food from their former colony, Mozambique, so I had high hopes for Brazil… but was really disappointed by the food. Portuguese food in Portugal is amazing.
I think my overuse of the word calories has had people think this is some dieting based thing when it’s really not. Maybe another way to explain it is like, if I have 5 days in a place, that’s only 15 meals so it’s about making each meal count because there’s so few of them (except I didn’t use the meals analogy because it’s so much more complicated than just the 3 main meals a day).
It’s about feeling like this is the main limitation that needs to be planned around when I make my travel plans, that there’s only a fixed “budget” of food I can physically consume so any choice necessitates the elimination of another choice.
Another way I’ve thought about describing it is like, if you’re a fan of art, it’s quite easy for you to visit a place and see like, 10x the amount of art the average tourist sees in that place. At some point, you exhaust all the interesting art to see in a city but it’s quite feasible to see a lot more art if your interest is art. If you love shopping, it’s easy to shop at 10x the number of stores the average person would shop at and still find enjoyable, interesting new places to shop. If you love nature, you can probably hike 10x the amount of trails etc.
But if you love food, you can maybe eat 20% more food in a place than the average tourist. Of all the major reasons people have for tourism, this is the one with the hard cap that’s the lowest and hardest to adjust. So even though I have many interests I’m trying to accomodate when I’m travelling and food frequently isn’t the top one, it still is at the top of my priority list when I plan because it’s the hardest one to accomodate and the one I feel like I miss out the most on if I make poor choices. In a world where I could magically fast for 5 weeks and then eat 6 weeks worth of food in a week, the food portion of travel planning would be a breeze and something I absolutely wouldn’t stress about.
It’s sometimes the same for dishes native to the place you are visiting. Just because you like the chiles rellenos at your favorite place in East LA, doesn’t mean you’re going to like what they serve in Mexico City.
I think I understood your OP - but no, I don’t plan like that. Even my husband who does a little bit of pre-planning for meals doesn’t do what you describe. He’ll decide on a restaurant or two he wants to try and/or a dish or two he wants to try but that’s about it. We like to eat well on vacations and we don’t necessarily want familiar food but I also don’t think weeks in advance about which of the 20 restaurants that look interesting I will have dinner at each night of my weeklong vacation. Like I said , maybe one or two. For example, we went to Charleston and there were two places he wanted to go. One required a reservation, so we made a reservation but the other was a BBQ place, so we just went when it fit around other activities. I don’t like the sort of vacation where everything is very scheduled ( I go on that type of trip - I just wouldn’t call it a vacation) . I don’t even want it to be so scheduled that I know which 7 restaurants I will have dinner at during the week.
Chances are they did and the recipe was changed to make it taste better to the locals, the same way Italian pizza evolved in the US to cater to the American palate.
I don’t think OP is saying they’ll plan weeks in advance. What they’re saying is, if they’ve got an hour to kill before the next activity and they’re feeling a bit peckish, don’t suggest Applebee’s. That’s one of 15 precious meals on their vacation and they’ll be damned if they’re going to spend it on basic sustenance.
If that’s all they mean, then I’m not sure what all that “stomach space budget” was about. Or why they couldn’t just say what you did- that I understand and yeah, I don’t want to go to Applebee’s either but I am definitely not doing this
I always start my trip planning by researching what are the local specialties to try, any restaurants that are particularly unique & dishes in those restaurants that sound amazing to get a general sense of what the lay of the land is, and then a very rough idea in my head of the calorie budget I’m playing with and the idea that a calorie allocated towards one purpose necessarily means a forgone calorie somewhere else.
